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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

the funny pages

I wasn’t quite sure whether to add to the mountains of comment about the recent furore over some cartoons published in various newspapers. But there are number of things which bother me, about the coverage, and the principles of the various protagonists, that I need to set down. Plus the comment here goaded me on.

(1) The headline image is not an attack on Muhammad, that much is plainly obvious – but an attempt to satirise those who use him as an inspiration to harming others, and go about destroying innocent lives through their zealous violence. (There is, thus, a lot of irony in the protesters who called for bombings and killings of those they feel have affronted them). But the majority of the protesters have thus got the wrong end of the stick...

(2)...as much as the media coverage, which has been fascicle enough to help people imagine that there hasn’t been a long tradition of portraying Muhammad in Islamic art. The mere presentation is not an affront to the sacredness of religion, despite what some Muslims may say. There has been a lot of sanctimonious rushing to understand, without actually get a grip on the sheer diversity of Muslims around.

(3) This isn't really a matter of defending free speech, apart from in the fantasies of a few ideologues that manage to presume it's best to show how valuable our social openness is by using that chance to whip up trouble. Most of us need offending, to keep us on our toes. But it's an abuse of our press to use it for attention-seeking self-indulgence. Most of the cartoons that were fussed-over tried to make up for how dull their satire was by just being deliberately bad taste. They were just piss-poor humour. Like the Pete Kay skit where he has some "alternative comedians" with an act that consists of swearing at pensioners.

(4) The genuinely subversive cartoonists out there, please sharpen your pens and set to work - we need better than this extreme stupidity. Indeed we deserve the best our cultures have to offer, at this time more than ever, when some seem to want to spark off the supposed clash of civilisations.

Well, what I mean is that it is many practices are acceptable in the Muslim world that those of us in the West consider barbaric, such as slicing off the clitorises of little girls, killing women because they have been raped -- well, just about everything that they do to women over there.

Not to mention their rampant paranoia about the Jews and general willigness to riot with the slightest provocation. I mean, people have died because of these cartoons. It's like so many Muslims have any sense of proportion or control over their anger.

It is somewhat comporable to the 'Christianity' of Francisco Pizarro or Hernando Cortez. Thankfully, that Christianity has transmuted, over time, into something far less genocidal.

So what we're trying to do in Iraq is into introduce a retrovirus into Islam that will pacify it -- make it less willing to go flying off the handle and killing people.

And it's very important that we do so now. Because once nuclear weapons become accessible in the Middle East, London, Washington, NYC, and many other cities are going to get vaporized. And that will require a massive response in kind.

A crazy civilization without nukes is more or less managable. We can put them in a corner and be alright. A crazy civilization with nukes will force us to obliterate it.

In the long run, people will be able to make a nuke from chemicals under their kitchen sink. So we cannot simply stop the nuclear clock. Technological progress will eventually put nukes in their hands.

So, what do we do with a crazy civilization trying to get nukes? First, we do our best to keep nukes out of their hands and do whatever we can to uncrazify them.